Today, the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) released the District of Columbia Attendance Report for school year 2023-24, showing the lowest chronic absenteeism and truancy rates for DC students since returning to classrooms following the COVID-19 pandemic.
Both chronic absenteeism and truancy improved, with chronic absenteeism decreasing 3.9 percentage points from 43.1 percent in the 2022-23 school year to 39.2 percent in 2023-24 and chronic truancy decreasing 6.6 percentage points from 36.9 percent in the 2022-23 school year to 30.3 percent in 2023-24.
“We’re motivated by this progress and committed to ensuring this downward trend in absenteeism continues,” said Interim State Superintendent Antoinette S. Mitchell. “Our schools and our educators are doing tremendous work of which we can all be proud. By attending school every day, our students can fully benefit from the rigorous teaching and learning happening across the District.”
The 2023-24 school year chronic absenteeism and truancy declines were driven by a reduction in unexcused absences. These trends continue the improvement in attendance rates that began during the 2022-23 school year.
To drive the Bowser Administration’s efforts to further reduce chronic absenteeism and truancy, the Office of the Deputy Mayor for Education relaunched the Every Day Counts! Taskforce in October to prioritize a whole-of-government approach to supporting students and families.
“Like many cities across the country, we saw the pandemic change families’ relationship with daily attendance and have invested in data-driven strategies to get students back in school,” said Deputy Mayor for Education Paul Kihn. “Through the Every Day Counts! Taskforce and other partnerships, we’ll focus on engaging DC Government agencies in system-level supports and interventions to continue addressing attendance barriers families and students face, building on the vital school-based ground game that makes our steady progress possible.”
One initiative taking effect for the first time in the 2024-25 school year is a truancy referral pilot with the Department of Human Services, which is helping students who face barriers to school attendance connect to a range of resources they may need to remediate them, including the Parent and Adolescent Support Services (PASS) program.
Attending schools every day is critical in helping students succeed in the classroom and beyond. In October, as the state education agency for the District of Columbia, OSSE pledged to cut chronic absence in DC by 50 percent over five years. The District joined a list of more than a dozen states pledging to improve student attendance in response to chronic absence nearly doubling across the nation during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The annual DC attendance report reflects OSSE’s commitment to improving attendance in DC’s public schools and fulfills the statutory requirement for annual attendance reporting. For a summary of the data, or to read the full report, visit OSSE's website.